Magix Movie Edit Pro MX Plus review

1 / 2

After years of incremental improvements, video-editing software is currently going through some big changes. It’s all thanks to technologies such as CUDA and OpenCL, which give software applications wider-reaching access to the processor on the graphics card – the GPU. The parallel processing architecture that’s so well suited to drawing 3D worlds in games also happens to be pretty good at decoding and encoding video streams and applying video effects.

Magix’s website lists 17 ways in which this update is faster than its predecessor, including program launch, project loading, GPU acceleration of certain effects and more responsive timeline controls. Top of the list is AVCHD export, which Magix claims is “on average up to 3 times faster… thanks to Nvidia CUDA and AMD Open CL support”.

No time to edit yourself? The new movie templates provide a handy shortcut, but there are only 15 to choose from

Our tests confirmed only some of these claims. Program launch was down from nine to five seconds, and project loading was marginally quicker. Processing a 30-second AVCHD clip for image stabilisation on our Core i7 PC fell from 201 seconds to 22 seconds – just shy of the claimed 10-fold speed boost.

We didn’t experience the three-fold improvement in AVCHD export speed, though. In fact, the new version was slightly slower in our tests. Magix quotes specific tests using a Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz PC to deliver improvements up to 350 per cent, but it seems that our Core i7 processor didn’t benefit from help from the graphics processor for this particular task.

It did no better than the previous version in our standard preview test, either. As before, Movie Edit Pro managed to play three simultaneous AVCHD streams before it started to drop frames, not far off the four streams managed by our current Best Buy, Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum, but a far cry from the 10 streams managed by PowerDirector Ultra.

There’s a new offline render command for sections of the timeline that prove too complex for the software to preview smoothly. Sections requiring help can be picked with a Range tool or left for the software to define, but rendering must be invoked manually, whereupon no further editing is possible until it’s finished. This often took many minutes, and had to be repeated after any further editing of that section. Adobe and Pinnacle’s background rendering functions do the same thing with much less fuss and interruption.

There’s a generous helping of other new features, and it’s some of the simpler ones that we’re most impressed with. It’s now possible to apply and adjust effects to a group of clips simply by selecting them on the timeline before heading to the Effects tab. The height of tracks on the timeline can be adjusted individually, and thumbnails in the media pool can be resized for easier browsing. The slow motion effect now benefits from interpolation to generate additional frames for smoother motion, and we love the way you can create keyframes for variable playback speed – something other consumer editors lack.

Movie Edit Pro isn’t short of power, but the quality of its effects falls a little short of the competition

The revamped travel route animation feature generates videos of maps with animated planes, trains, cars and flying saucers, although it’s not significantly better than the old version it replaces. There’s also a set of 15 movie templates, complete with titles, transitions, effects and music, ready for you to drop your video clips into. It’s an interesting spin on the automatic editing concept, but the templates aren’t generic enough for repeated use, and don’t encourage the user to find the best bits of a clip.

Various features that we’d have liked to see improved remain unchanged. We don’t understand the logic of the ripple editing mode, whereby clips shuffle along automatically when earlier clips are moved but not when their length is adjusted. It’s great to have some control over ripple editing – most consumer editors leave it permanently on – but none of the options are in keeping with our expectations. We also found that many of the new features were tricky to locate in the dense interface. Magix gave Movie Edit Pro a thorough spring clean in version 15, but the interface is beginning to sprawl once again.

This is an ambitious update, but it leaves us feeling indifferent. The performance improvements didn’t have much bearing on everyday use in our tests, and the other new features aren’t exactly game-changers. Movie Edit Pro is hard to fault for breadth of features, but while it beats the likes of Vegas Movie Studio for quantity, it falls short for quality. For us, Vegas Movie Studio’s elegant interface and more attractive effects are more rewarding.